What They Saw (What We Deserve)
by AnonWriter27
Summary: Maybe it wasn't just PTSD. Maybe it was something that could have destroyed John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. And it was All Fine. Right? May contain disturbing themes to some readers. Not post-Reichenbach


**Borderline Personality Disorder**

**(noun)**

**Definition of BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER**

**:** a disordered behavior pattern with onset by early adulthood that is characterized by multiple types of psychological instability and impulsiveness, often involves fear of abandonment and a risk of suicide

* * *

It was first a fissure across the aqua viridian iris of his right eye, then the left, then spider webs around his corneas. Sherlock thought he was falling apart, a gazillion fragments of pseudo-sociopath and deductions; there were woolen threads in the air, in starry hues with only the most painful memories. On closer inspection, they couldn't be his. He had no recollection of hot sand stuffed down his throat ,or yells that smelled of Jack Daniels and lost sisters ,or the taste of soft plastic after every meal ,or a bitterness that could have been hate ,or a–

No.

Those weren't Sherlock's which could only mean–

John Watson was breaking.

* * *

Mycroft, who was made of cameras, saw it first; looked at the ex-army doctor whose smile was uncannily similar to Mummy's, a stretch of not-quite-there-yet love and I-hope-you-can't-see-it loneliness, who tried to chuckle and inhale at the same time, unsure if it was more essential live first or flatter Sherlock.

"Sherlock, that's the man. He took me to a warehouse." John said.

_'I thought he was going to take me away from you'_ John didn't say.

Mycroft reminded Sherlock of Mummy who was John in every single way because no one can meet her and not adore her, look at her and not want to kiss away the tears embedded in her pupils. John was Mummy in every single way because he was beautiful like a dying comet's tail, desperate with his hands that had phalanges that couldn't help but pull the trigger and use the bullet that was supposed to be in his own head a few months ago, brave in trying to breathe as if he didn't need Sherlock at all.

'You cannot leave him now. He loves you and has breathed his solar system around you and has fired a bullet with seventy five not good implications. For you. '

But John, who was beside Sherlock and in a jumper and warm, was delighted in a way that possibly made the younger Holmes slightly in love as well; so Sherlock fought with Mycroft because there was absolutely nothing wrong.

"I disappoint Mummy?" Sherlock spat.

* * *

_"The coagulation of blood near the occipital lobe is ruining everything, John!" Sherlock prattled, sitting beside John on the divan. He wrapped his limbs around his blogger, seeing if they could possibly share the skin on their bodies._

* * *

Sarah saw it too. Sweet and kind and possibly beautiful Sarah who says yes to John's _would yous_ because of his smile that was all thin lips and _please please please I need him_; okays to the doctor's _sorrys_ and _Sherlocks_ and _next times_.

"Do you fancy a bite?" John asked quickly.

"Of course," Sarah forced through the pink lipstick "I'll tell Andrea to take over."

So John took her for granted, thought she was absolutely blind to it all. He took her to breakfasts and lunches that pricked the back of her eyes, as well as to teas and dinners that almost hid everything from her retinas. When they laughed –shyly or loudly or suddenly – he was assured he had pulled the wool over her eyes, when in reality, it was down her throat, blocking the chokes, trying to make them sound like everything was perfectly fine instead.

"So, Sherlock grabbed the murderer by the hair and pulled!" John mimicked the actions like an over enthusiastic stage ingénue "It was like a public school girl brawl!"

He laughed loudly, willing Sarah to join in. Sarah did.

"You really know how to tell a story, boy!" Charles from Neurology chimed.

'They are all Sherlock's stories' Sarah thought, all the while conscious if her smile was convincing enough. Happy enough.

John never thinks that Sarah notices the scalpels and syringes and cuts that bleed Sherlock Holmes because John kissed Sherlock to bits and pieces to fill in the gaps inside, plugged in quarters of the detective until the stuffing burst at the raw edges that he never knew were there in the first place. (The holes that the pills couldn't take away). During warmer suns, when coats and scarves and cashmere anythings are simply absurd, they stand out like sparklers; she notices the cuts, the utter bleakness that went deeper than the pain, could feel them clawing on her own skin. So, Sarah just understands; continues her _yeses, okays, and no problems_ and wonders that if even Sherlock could fix John H. Watson.

"Tea?" He holds out her coat.

"Why not?"

* * *

And maybe Donovan suspected it as well, caught a glimpse of the crack at the edge of John's mouth –too many fake smiles.

"If you know what's good for you, you'll leave him"

She might have remembered what it was like to break, hear the tear resonating throughout your whole body until the only thing the blood cells can carry is the echo of the incoming pain –and that could scare a person more than the wound itself.

"I can't, Sally," John tried to joke "221B would be in an uproar."

Donovan knows he can't. That she was telling him to throw away his tattered heart that was worn around the edges with emotions and Afghanistan, the one with gaping holes stuffed with neutral memories that meant nothing and Sherlock who meant everything –the only heart he had left.

"When the freak does you in," Sally tells his smile that was trying far too hard to be a smile "don't say I didn't warn you."

* * *

Moriarty thought it was absolutely delicious. This was not boring, not at all. In fact, it was cruel, Moriarty-esquely so, to keep a man that was barely hanging on to his limbs, drag him around to be bruised and shot at while promising all the affection in the universe. He never knew Sherlock had it in him.

"What do you think, Sebastian?"

But Moriarty knew, it was sentiment –_love _kept John Watson stitched to the younger Holmes, injected the anesthesia so they can't feel the diagonals that held them both together expand and contract on their sides, two long columns of thread above blood stains above skin above muscle above anguish.

"Hopeless, sir" said Moran, though unsure whether Jim was referring to the China case or the composition of negative infinity.

Jim only wanted to play. He was incredibly bored. He wanted to see how much will John Watson contort for the detective, if the pet will point his limbs in the oddest angles for Sherlock, even until something inside irreparably breaks. Or until Holmes sees John in all his reds, blues, blacks, and greys.

Perhaps, Sherlock doesn't want to _see_ at all, coated speckled cream paint over the faults that would've let him slip through if he wanted, coloured John so many times with palettes that didn't have a single hurt colour, squeezed those wonderfully ambiguous eyes tight, and smelled the tea John Watson's skin because you can't possibly smell grief. (Can you?)

"Yes," Jim said "I quite agree."

* * *

_Sherlock was so warm, a litany of adjectives that toasted over the red-orange embers. The arm around John's waist felt like an anchor, the breath and vibrato behind his ear sounded like forever, an infinite stretch of Sherlock and Holmes and nothing else._

_"I love you," John said, possibly inserting the heavy words in between 'formation' or 'clotting' or 'parietal' "you know that. Don't you, Sherlock? So much that saying it steals all the oxygen from my cells. Does it help you breathe better? More oxygen, more love?" _

* * *

"Have you seen Sherlock? Has he left again?" John asked because the crime scene felt scarier without Sherlock and it went into his bones.

"Err…I think he's by the rubbish bins down the hall" the Yard officer said gruffly.

Then it was everyone else. Lestrade. Molly. Mrs. Hudson. Sherlock Holmes pretended everything was absolutely fine. He ignored the John that blurred the walls of 221B and the rest of the world: intimately touching Sherlock's pulse in front of corpses, looking for the genius's dilated eyes during the chase, stance too choreographed when setting the kettle, smile too wide before folding himself into Sherlock . Never mind the sadness that didn't know which corner to hide in, so decided to be everywhere else at once. His was a John Watson that was kind, exciting, and perfect –perhaps the John Watson the rest of us see.

"Sherlock!" John sighed in relief "There you are! Are you ready to go home?"

"Just a minute, John" Sherlock mumbled "I need to look for the wedding ring"

"What wedding ring?"

"Don't be obtuse" There was a smile hiding in the last syllable.

NSY wondered if John would ever step out of Sherlock's gravitational pull, and if he did, would he survive? Because John might just be the kind of satellite that survived on adrenaline, crime scenes, and indescribable love affairs. Mrs. Hudson knew that the ex-captain wouldn't; sometimes heard the hollow thump when he sat down for tea or looked her in the eyes. There was an absence of brown, a proper kind of brown, the woody chocolate hue that should've been dark enough, hiding the vessels and the nerves and the emptiness, not the ones that John had: cellophane eyes that could be pierced by the grieving stars and frozen tears.

"Good case, boys?" Mrs. Hudson called out from 221A. "Does John need a cuppa or a bite?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Mrs. Hudson" Sherlock shouted back as ran after John up the stairs "John is perfectly fine."

"If you say so dearest." she answered, hoping the 'really?' wouldn't slip past the tip of her tongue.

But most nights when Sherlock stilled his breaths, he placed his ear right under John's solar plexus, willing the blood to gush faster, the heart to beat harder, the insides to work more, the memories of _them_ to start playing in their own special cacophony; to convince himself that John was not empty even though his tears on their pillows were like tiny crystal murano vases and his cries against Sherlock's clavicles were the thinnest on earth.

* * *

_But the person who didn't see it at all was John Watson himself._

_"I do, John, "Sherlock starts, but the baritone words couldn't find John's ears anymore. The doctor only sees the tiniest mole on Sherlock's jugular, the light sprinkling of freckles under the right ear, the curls that were extra dark near the roots, the lost comma of brown that was lost in the sea of teal and electric green of the right eye._

_"You don't love me" John cried "because I still see something new about you every time we're together, the smallest details that I should've known long before and you hate me for it."_

_"No!" Sherlock exclaimed, surprised and panicked and desperately sad ", I don't care about that!"_

_"You do! I know you do because you are Sherlock and you've known everything about me from the first glance and I'm normal. You are so extraordinary. I can't capture you in my mind's eye because the brightness of you can't be captured by the film. So I do it one frame at a time. That annoys you. It will make you hate me."_

_"I'll tell you everything you want to know. No drawbacks. I promise."_

_"But you won't tell me how many moles are scattered on your lower back like constellations or the molars in your mouth that remind me of smiles that took my breath away because you don't love me as you did. I'm just another half-empty glass of water." _

_"You are more than just glass and water, John."_

_But John feels the split in the middle. He can feel himself drowning, his lungs trying to breathe; the unequal hope between the very bottom of everything that pushed down on you, and knowing that if you kick upwards a little more, there is oxygen, and the fear that it might not be yours to breathe. _

_"Have you had your medicine yet?" Sherlock asks the air –the substance that has all of John's particles floating, skin that was dead (maybe half-drowned) but when gathered could make another John, the John that wasn't like this, a perfect John._

_"Take them with me."_

_Maybe if they took their pills together, it wouldn't be as hard. Maybe this time, it would get better. That was what the pills were supposed to do after all. They could swallow one after another in between breaths and kisses until they finish all the green bottles in the medicine cabinet. If Sherlock and John would kneel in the bed of shattered glass that looked like seaweed, and hold each other in an embrace that would squeeze all the words left unsaid, they could die. If they did, maybe the glass wouldn't be so incomplete anymore. The medicine would have worked. Sherlock and John would have worked._

_(Maybe the boys would have loved in a way they both deserved.) _

* * *

Disclaimer: I do not own BBC Sherlock.

_A/N: Reviews are love and rainbows and french macaroons! Thank you for reading! _


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